I love this section of Scripture, it’s just so precious. Seemingly impossible news has been given….a virgin is going to give birth to the Son of God and Elizabeth an old barren woman is going to bear the forerunner of Jesus, John the Baptist. Mary beautifully submits to the word of the Lord as His bondservant and then runs (or went in a hurry, runs sounds better) to Elizabeth’s, as she walks in and Elizabeth hears Mary’s greeting Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit….the Spirit and the leaping baby in her womb fill her.
Have you ever been 6 months pregnant before? Can you even imagine how this would have felt? A baby leaping for joy and the mother being filled with the Spirit all at the same time? For real?! I had some pretty strong kicks with my babies…but leaping? I can tell you right now, this has never happened before and this is huge. Not just pregnant huge, but huge in the sense of God is doing very new and very profound things….because this baby Jesus is going to change everything!
Upon her Holy Spirit experience, Elizabeth gets an even bigger glimpse of God’s purposes and responds; “Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb! And how has it happened to me, that the mother of my Lord would come to me? …Blessed is she who believed that there would be a fulfillment of what had been spoken to her by the Lord.”
Elizabeth's spiritual eyes are opening. She recognizes that her Lord is present, within the womb of Mary and she also recognizes the simple yet profound faith of Mary in believing what the angel had spoken to her…Mary was blessed not only because of Who she is carrying but also because of the faith that she had to believe it was going to happen. In all this, Elizabeth is blessed as well by the filling of the Holy Spirit and seeing, catching a bigger glimpse of what God is doing for her and for the world. How precious and gracious of the Lord…to both of them.
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